they said you're not from america. it wasn't in africa that i learned about racism but here in united states. we were completely broke and i did something real unpopular at the time. four days after high school i joind the united states army. not only to serve my country but to get the,gi bill to continue my education. then i saw young men and women from all across america. from farms and ranches and it matedm made me realize the strength in this country is not from commonality but our great diversity. i had a younger sister named gift of god and christa was a special girl because she suffered from severe epilepsy.

she never once complained. she never said across word and it could or would take her an hour or two to line um... up her clothes and do our homework and get her lunch b bag ready. i'm the five minutes bed to - bus kind of guy, you know? well krista saw the baseball movie called field of dreams. very inspiring movie that takes place in the corn field in iowa and decided for her 23rd birthday she wanted to go see that place. she was living in minneapolis and packed her bags to go to the field of dreams. when my mother went to wake her up on july 24th 1992 she had died in her sleep from a massive seizure and it was devastating for all of us. i was climbing quite a bit and

roaming around quite a bit and every summer i would take a month and do something with her. every year we could go to disneyland and i took her to yosemite. it was very special to do that with my sister. at the time i was climbing a lot, i thought i'm going to pick a big bad mountain to climb in honor of krista. she had an amber necklace she got on the indian ocean coast and i was going to take that and put it on top of,k 2. when i went to,k 2 to climb a mountain and instead a found affair greater mountain to climb. here's the world's second highest mountain. you can put 84, monthe horns here to fill it up. i hope there's no outdoor

retailers. two season family camping tents from logan you at the this tenth is a french league on eres tenth designed for the sahara. this came from north face prototype tenth called the wind tunnel. it was 20 years old when we took it to,k 2. here's our mottly crew of 12 climbers. the gentleman in the white shirt left after one week after he found out there's no alcohol in pakistan. i don't tell you anymore where he's from, but this is - what is this doug? deadly. avalanche. we call this the mother of all avalanches a year after desert storm. intense from spain and you can see the guys running out in

their underwear. fortunately nobody was killed in this avalanche. this is the art memorial in honor of, art gillke. we climbed a lot at night and these for tops of pots and pans that have been carved out in the names of climbers that died on this mountain. we climbed at night and it's difficult because you can only see ten feet for front of you and 6,000s of feet below we heard plates clanging against the rocks and i thought really is this a good way to honor my sister. finally 78 days later it was time to go home. i was weak, exhausted and emaciated but most of all i felt that neck la l necklace and i ft her down. anybody that read the book can you remember what the first

chapter is called. it starts with an,f, failure. that's another thing they really objected to in manhattan. said you can't start a book with the word failure. at least i won that argument. i said you know, our success is originally based in failure and you know what? all of us make mistakes and all of us sometimes fail. sometimes with relationships or investments or fail with jobs. um... i flunked my first driving test when i was 16 and totald the car while parallel parking and some student wills not get into college. really when you fail it's not the end of the road. it's more of an opportunity and away to find a different path. when i come to those moments in life, i think of the perz yen

proverb that says when it's dark you can see the star. for those of you that have been there, i failed get a really good sunset picture on,k 2. this is actually a volcano in mexico but i love this climbing photo to end the climing sequence. so, here's our dirt bag climbers. done with the climb and it's time for me to head back to berkley. i was very weak and fortunately, we were still alive. that year five of 12 climbers that ascending died during the descend. i had to walk five days back to the nearest village to catch a jeep back to civilization. as i got to the village a string of kids started grabbing on to me and as i got near there was a stout, gruff man with a silver

grin and he looked at me and he said peace be with you and then he looked at me and shook his a had had and said chiz l.a. i'm from the midwest and the best translation is what the heck. i was skruf if i and looked pretty bad and he said, son, i'd like you to come to our village but first, you need to take a bath. so, i went down to the river, very filthy, a washed up and we went for tea. in that sorry lame i learned many things. one out of three children there dies before the age of one. usually dehydration or diarrhea induced dehydration. many young men have left the villages to try and get jobs as dishwashers in the cities or work on construction crews or

work for foreign climbers and they often have to pull they're resources and sell they're goats and land to bribe somebody. for who is left behind is the women and they say now they're workload has doubled over the last two decades. i walked into this stli ladies and gentle village and we had yet to have three cup office tea with each other. first cup your a stranger, second cup a friend, and third cup you become family but the process take many years. here in american we have two minutes football drills and 6 second sound bites and 30 minutes power lunches and really it's about three cups of tea and really it's about relationships. i asked about a school and i know thisd the kids disappeared and i asked about school and they were very embarrassed and finally took me behind the

village and i saw 84 children sitting in the dirt during school lessons. five girls and 79 boys and writing with sticks in the sand. i've seen a lot of poverty in africa but when i saw those kids and a young girl came up to me and - it was a cold autumn day and he or she said will you help us build a school and i made a very rash promise and promised to build a school. i was very broke and had to raise 12 thousand dollars and i didn't have a clue how to raise money like that. so i went to the local library. any librarians here. there's one. let's all give them a big and. [applause] so i went to the library, the resource librarian and talked to her and we looked

up the name of 580 celebrities and movie stars and i didn't know how to use a computer so i and typed 580 letters. dear michael jordan, dear sylvester stallone. guess what happened? nothing. then at christmas time i got one check for $100 from tom brokaw and then i saw my climbing ger and i sold it and i sold my car for $500 that i got from my grandfather in a seedy area in oakland. by string i o spring i had only $2,400. my mother invited me to come and talk to the kids. when i got ready to leave, a fourth grader named jeffery looked me in the aye and he

said i've got a piggy bank at home and i'm going to help you build that school. west side school raised 65, 300 pennies. it wasn't the celebrities or the sports heroes or movie stars or if i lan throw pears but children reaching out to children half way around the world to help them build a school. what can you buy with a penny the bay area? probably nothing. in montana you can buy 1/2 tootsie roll. but in afghanistan you can buy a pencil. it's not that's so important but education gives a child hope. you know, if you fight tear riz her

rorism it's based in fear but the real enemy is ignorance that bleeds hatred. here in america, afghanistan, africa or pakistan. the way to overcome that i think is through education and also with having courage and compassion. instead of building walls we need to build peace and have the courage to do that. so i went back to pakistan in 94 and brought the school supplies and finally got to the village and the man was again there to greet me. he shook his head and said, chizle what the heck. not only had i come back, he said you've made two big mistakes. we don't start building before wintertime and if you really want to build school we're going to have to build a bridge first and i hadn't really thought

about that. so i came back to america and raised 10,000 more dollars. and then i got back from tack stan and bridge got built and no school yet. i was 38 years old, die hard bachelor and all i could think was getting that school built. i went to a fund raise er the fair month in san francisco where my hero was speaking. it was getting late and people were nodding off and he was going on and on about the queens coronation so i went to the back to get some fresh air and there was a beautiful woman in the back wearing a dress and black combat books and her name was, tara bishop and six months later got married and now we're living happily ever after in montana.

[applause] i also a guy name keesh ran a company called laser image and he taught me how to use a computer and tara after watching me for several days one day, i was writing the fund raising letters and i learned on the computer but she said let me show you something. it's called cut and paste. so, with her now we could write hundreds of fund raising letters and in pakistan i learned to use a local laptop. slate board there. the whole village participated in the building school and it was a joy ous time. this is 18 miles - on that bridge - i didn't mention it but there's 5, 800 pound cables they carried up to the village.

8 men would put this with a spool and carry this up to the village. this is where they're carrying the struts and beams for the roof. what's amazing here, this man is the head man for the village. i don't know if there's clergy here, but in their culture they're not supposed to do labor. they're suppose to give spiritual advice. he carried the first load symbolizing his advocacy for education. in the back there's the silver beard. see after three years we hadn't gotten very far. the problem wasn't them but me. i was doing something we call micromanage meant. i had my receipts and i was determined to make this school getting built without losing one

dollar and village chief one day came up to me and sat me down and said son, you need to do one thing, you need to sit down and be quiet and let us do the work and he took my receipts and records and locked them in an earthen locker and he came back with his british musket gun, when you fire it it blasts in your face and he came back and said everything will be fine. a l.a. willing. six weeks later the school got built. it was an important lesson to let go and let the communities be empowered and let them do they're work in entirety. it came time to open the school and kids came from all around and julia came all the way here from america. you could see this colorful

lapel around they're neck that means bam! of courage. it's put around a newborn when they're first born to ward away evil spirits, so the kids put that around they're neck. julie you want to model this? this is a, tomar. it means badge of courage. look at this gentlemen on the right. he has orange haier. not because he died it but because he has a disease where he's starving from protein deficiency. see the joy despite the lack of these things. it came in 96 i decided to dedicate my life to promoting literacy and building schools in that part of the world and i've gotten married and had a baby on

the way, and if you want to read the book there's an 8 day kidnapping and many things happened but another thing that happened in 96, i had my first fatawa issued against me. this is not just a death decree but it can prohibit women from going shopping or it can mean you can't watch television. in my case. it was banishing me from the country because i was helping put girls in school. i sought the advise of the head shiite in north pakistan. before you pass judgement on him, he's the good guy. very noble compassionate visionary man and he said, well let me find out and he wrote a letter to the counsel to seek clarification as to what to do

with this crazy american in their midst trying put girls in school. i was summond to the intersank tum of the inner mosque. it was intimidating. there was 8 of them with their black turf bonns on anbens and a box. and in that was a letter in the persian script and said dear compassion of the poor we reviewed your case and in koran education is inor encouraged for all children. it encourages all people to have knowledge and seek knowledge. well, um... with that letter, started getting dozens of proposals especially for girls schools. why is girls education so

important? i've gone to the extent now where i say you can drop bombs and build roads or put in electricity but until the girls are implicated, society won't change. several global studies show if you educate a girl to fifth grade level it does three things. reduce infant mortality, population explosion reduction and improve the quality of life and health. if your interested you can look up a guy called, well he wrote a book called development is freedom. it's a fat book. in the 60's another writer had the very foresite to see that girls education would be a process to bring about stabilization of population. he wrote a book called the poverty curve and jeffery sacks

wrote the end of poverty in bangladesh a great example, they introduced 35 years ago to do a campaign to get all women and men or boys literate. it was 22% and today it's more than 75 percent if you look at a demographic curve with the population, you can see it's just starting to reach an apex in bangladesh. they're way ahead of india, and pakistan. it's an impact to stabilize the population there. also, um... excuse me. you know having hard cover thing fighting terrorism with education i've learned from

islamic scholars. in the koran it's implicitly stated in the holy koran when a young mangos on jiha d and this is a spiritual endeavor to seek knowledge. it could also mean he's going into a group. but he has to get blessings from his mother first and if he doesn't do that it's shameful and disgraceful. after 911 the taliban had a high desertion rate and they were trying to get recruit groups to fight against intervention and coalition and they went in literally impoverished societies because educated women refused to allow they're sons to fight in theal bonn. you have a less educated mother

here. single parent in the difficult system. the higher education a women has the more likely her son is to go on with education rather than getting into violence and drugs and certainly she won't condone her son getting into a gang or drugs. i've sometimes been criticized for that because they say all the 911 hijackers were educated and had university degrees and that certainly is true. but nobody botherd to check they're mothers and nearly all of them were i late rate an illiterate. exciting news and then i have to unfortunately talk to you about negative news. i've been in perhaps 120 cities over the past 14 months talking to maybe 50,000 people and i ask this question most places i go and i'll ask you today. how many of you are aware of the

fact in afghanistan today, there's 5 point 2 million children going to school and 1 point 8 million of those are female and in 2000 there was only 8 hundred 6,000 kids in school. how many of you know that fact? one, two, you? so that makes my total now - i've counted 21 people in america. to me that's single most incredible inspiring news to come out of that country. that alone is justification for the sacrifice and cost and the investment in that country and nobody in america is aware of that. the media, government, the people. to me that news should be broadcast from every mountain top in this publication called

hope we write about that. go and tell people there's some really good things happening and it's related to employ kabs and the number of kids in afghanistan it's gone up six fold since 2000. unfortunately there's other forces at work. in the last year the taliban have bombed more than 400 mostly girls schools and it's travesty. what's amazing if you go back, they've been written off the government records and not getting funding but some kids are still trying go to school in these villages and i think we owe to those brave children to help those kids finish school and don't worry about the, i.e.d counts but worry about those brave children still trying go to school.

this is a school we opened up in 1998. 12 girls in the front row. i asked them to increase it by ten percent a year of the they don't know how to do they're math there. this is what happened one year later. now there's two rows of girls going to school here. this is on the far left in the back, silver beard is the first man to get an education in this school and his story is in the book. incredible story how he left the va ladies and gentlemen and his father booted him across the river and said don't come back until you get your education so he did this and he walked into this urban area and everybody was looking at him if you ask most men there in the back, what's the most proudest moment in your life, most of the men will say the birth of my first born son. not him, he will tell you the

proudest moment in my life is to see my two daughters going to school here in the village. the woman on the extreme far right, she's the first girl to get an education in that valley of about 4 thousand people. she first wrote with sticks in the sand and now she's her second year of medical school scoring in the 90's. her father said you should not become a doctor it's really messy but she's determined to go back to her village and become a physician to help her community and it's an incredible story of how like her father she's persevered. this girl is from the afghan border valley of about 4,000 people. she was the first girl to get an education in our village. the

communities there are somewhat proactive about girls education, it was difficult for her at first. the boys through publs at her at first. later on a couple of teachers didn't want to teach her because she was female. in high school some of the boys stole her notebooks because they didn't want her to graduate. but she did. there's no medicine or clinic or hospital here. before she started working in 2000 in this valley, five to 20 women died in childbirth every year so. she went to two years of training and cost us about $800 and her pay is just over a dollar a day and not one women has died since she's come back and is working there. and now i'll jump forward a bit. when we get hundreds of letters in our office and e-mails and

some of the most powerful e-mails are those from our armed forces serving in afghanistan and sometimes iraq. recently i got an e-mail from a colonel. his first name is kris. he's the commander of the saber forces called,fob. ford operating base in north star province in eastern afghanistan. one of the most difficult and dangerous areas to serve. he wrote to me first as a commander but also as a father and a husband and told me a little bit about how difficult it was and then he said, you know, he had all his guys read three cup office tea and really without education, whatever we do here is in vain. it's education is what we determined if these yog